New England Digital Synclavier

The Synclavier is something like the Rolls Royce of vintage
synthesizer heritage. The only competition in its time came from the
Australian made Fairlight CMI. The
Synclavier was a wildly expensive vintage digital sampling synthesizer
reserved for the most successful musicians, commercial studios, and
sound designers. Designed during the '70's, they can still be found
and prized by various sound designers, composers, and musicians.
Although there have been three models, (the second called the Synclavier
II pictured above) they are most often referred to as just a
Synclavier.

The first version appeared in 1977/78 but was soon replaced by the
Synclavier II in 1980 with a new "partial timbre" sound editing feature (it
tweaks the harmonics), built-in FM and additive synthesis, sampling, 64
voice polyphony, 32MB of waveform RAM (expandable to 768), 32 outputs,
music-notation printing, multitrack sequencing, and digital hard-disk
recording. In 1984 a third model was introduced and became the most
infamous version of the line-up. The new features included a full sized
and weighted keyboard with velocity and aftertouch which replaced the
previous model's plastic keyboard, and 128 voices polyphony. An
optional DSP effects package including time compression/expansion was
available for the Synclav as well. There was also a standard onboard
arpeggiator and a robust sequencer with up to 200 tracks and its sampler
had the ability to record and output at up to 100 khz!

The typical Synclavier system consists of a durable 76-note keyboard
peppered with 132 illuminated buttons and a single control knob,
connected to a rack-mounted CPU running NED's own 16-bit ABLE operating
system plus the nostalgic mid-eighties looking mono-chromatic computer
monitor/keyboard. Patches, sound files, sequences and samples are stored
to 5.25" diskette, hard disk or in some models, magneto-optical
drives.

It should be noted that there are all sorts of 'sub-revisions' of
the hardware component of the Synclav II, and these make each version
capable/incapable of doing certain things. Some lower-end versions are
not capable of using the 'Timbre-frame' timbral scanning programming
method. Others are not capable of handling a MIDI retrofit. And all of
these have different 'top versions' of the OS that they can handle,
making the purchase of a used Synclav system a dicey affair. You can't
always be 100% sure of which variation you're buying without some
extreme care being paid to which hardware it has and what versions of
the OS it's capable of running. You could therefore be buying anything
from a high-end sampling/sequencing workstation unit to a rather complex
12-op FM/additive synth, and several possibilities in between.

From its specs alone it can be seen that the Synclavier is a
masterpiece digital sampler / synthesizer workstation which was the
first of its kind, and way ahead of its time. They command prices well
into the thousands ($25,000 to $200,000) and are only used by those who
can afford such. New Synclavier systems (including new hardware,
software, and Mac OS X emulations of the Synclavier operating system)
service, and support are currently available through DEMAS, the
company created after the fall of New England Digital in 1992.
Additional service and support can also be found at Synhouse and Synclavier European
Services.